Right now im going to yield the floor, as they say in the senate, to our distinguished guest speakers, bob kerrey and jack danforth, who together spent more than 30 years i guess in the United States senate and served as governor, for bob kerrey, and attorney general, for dan for jack danforth. I will yield the floor force much time as you may consume. Great. Well first off its great to be with jack again. And let me try to be relatively brief, ive been out of the senate for 13 years, but the first most important question for the American People to ask and answer is do we have a problem . Because if you dont think theres a problem, particularly the candidates, and especially the press its just the candidate, is there a problem . Because if you dont think theres a problem, why pose any solution . One of the challenges we have, happen to think we do have a big problem and that its a demographic problem. It wasnt caught by liberals or conservatives. You cant blame it on anybody. Its demographics. It wouldve been easier to solve it in the mid 1990s before the big demographic problem begin a reality which was the baby boom generation beginning to draw down the claims they got uncle on medicare and Social Security. About 10,000 a day or Something White that are moving in the ranks of eligibility. Under law they are entitled to these benefits that are specified. Longer you wait the more difficult it is to solve the problem. Again as i said its not a problem that was created by left or right. Its a problem that we simply promised more than current law is able to keep. If you dont do anything today, at some point if you think young people getting screwed today, its getting worse because of some point youve got to cut benefits much larger, or raise taxes higher than relatively modest adjustments, although in a political environment such as today even relatively minor adjustments can be difficult. Get back to the first statement i made, most people and the press will say whats the problem . Meaning that anybody that proposes a solution to the problem will be criticized for that solution. Alan simpson and i introduced legislation in 95. I remember quite well. Bill referenced it. Its called normal retirement age so the got a got and talk, e pressel talk to people who were 75. You have to wait until youre 70 to retire. Do you think of that next its not retirement age any look. Its the eligibility for normal benefits. Theres no requirement so actually retire. The point im making is that its much easier to be a cosponsor of the donothing plan. Theres a consequences for being a cosponsor of the donothing plan. Nobody comes to you and says youre making changes and benefits, making changes in taxes. By the way you can never live a solution or a conservative solution. Theres a whole range of solutions in between its not like find a cure for cancer. Theres only 30 or 40 things you can do. There are no gimmie selections you can make but no selection is necessary and less until the public and the agents of the public, the press begin to say to senator windbag and others who did not have the responsibility to say to them, why are you sponsoring the donothing plan . Why are you sponsoring something that is going to produce a tremendous cut in benefits for people that are under the age of 30 . I can tell you why, because im 71 know. My cohorts vote 80 of his vote. If youre trying to get the vote of geezers, 20 of them vote. Why should i do something that will help them . I would use the chip sector but my kids and grandkids. Even though the donothing plan is quite negative to them. So i think the biggest problem that weve got going into the 2016 cycle is the one we had in 1994 and 1995, which is hard to me members of congress, far too many candidates get left off the hook because its easy to sponsor the donothing plan at the consequences getting very few questions of why are you proposing something thats going to make it even worse for the people you say you care about the most. Im done. [laughter] senator, ditto. [laughter] well, its been 20 years since our report. And we just had sandwiches downstairs, a bunch of us, and we had a spirited discussion on the following point. Is it fair to say that nothing has been done on the budget in 20 years . And there were those who said, well, its not literally true because theres some Little Things that have been done. My position is nothing has been done. I have now swung completely over to his point of view. Nothing has been done. [laughter] by policy center, i just want to highlight this. We negotiated this. Now, this is also the fourth anniversary of Simpson Bowles this month, and nothing has been done. I did not realize, as bob says, that there have been six or seven of the Commission Reports since ours, and nothing has been done. I think that the lesson of this is that Commission Reports, no matter how good they are, arent very efficacious. They dont really do very much. And if you can have the most persuasive case. I could remember after our report came out, we had these beautiful charts, just unbelievable graphs demonstrating where we are hating on Social Security, medicare, total spending and so on. Where we are heading. And i could remember presenting this, i thought doing a good job of presenting the case, to a group of people out in kansas city, older people mainly, and they just viewed it with total disbelief. They didnt want to believe it. And i think that its fair to say that neither politicians nor voters want to accept that something has to be done thats serious with regard to the entitlements, and in some way weve got to increase revenue. In the run up to the 19, 22012 president ial election, there was this famous debate in iowa. Eight president ial candidates stood on stage and there asks the question question, would you accept a deal with 10 times real spending cuts, 10 of real spending cuts for every dollar of tax increase . And if you would not accept that, would you raise your hand . All eight raised their right hands. They would not accept such a deal. That is another way of saying, raise your right hand and take a pledge. That if you like to be president , im not going to do anything to do with the problem of the debt. Because you cant put together a program to deal with the debt if that kind of an arrangement is off the table. There was a piece recently in politico about, it was called the go to simpsonbowles come into his about how politically the simpsonbowles recommendations have been used against people who supported them. What they do is they take some peace, some pieces of the recommendations and they run commercial. So instead of dealing with the whole problem of what to do about the debt as a totality, clever politicians, clever tactic, will take some little piece. So my opponents in favor of increasingly retirement age, or reducing Mortgage Interest Rate reduction, and thats the commercial. You can say that in about 10 seconds in a commercial. And its politically devastating to do that. What the public wants to believe is that you dont have to deal with the hard problems. And particularly dont have to deal with medicare and Social Security. Because we can cut waste at the budget. Now, check writing programs, which are the entitlement programs, are not particularly inefficient. There is no inefficiency in writing a check. So what they point to and what they hope is the case, the average citizen, like the people i spoke to in kansas city that day, the hope is that there is just a bunch of wasteful things that you cut back on those wasteful things, eliminate them. And they all have heard stories, and very popular politically to tell these stories. So they hear about something which is ridiculous, some program into why frogs have warts or Something Like that. That the part about and, cut back. And they believe that will take care of the problem. But the fact is that 10 years from now, entitlements plus interest on the debt, will consume 91 of federal revenue. 15 years from now, 100 of federal revenue. Whats that mean . That means that if the government were totally sufficient, if there was not 1 penny of waste in the government, there is not enough in those discretionary programs to pay for the rest of government. It cant be done. So the wasteful spending argument just doesnt hold water. And what does that and is happening now is that if you dont want to touch the entitlement program, what happens is that there is a squeezed border and anything which pertains to investment in the future of the country, like research, federal refund research, like infrastructure, like education. Anything that would produce future growth gets squeezed in order to pay out more and more particularly money to elderly people. I think that what we need is a relentless pursuit of the question of what to do about the National Debt in connection with the next president ial election. And by relentless pursuit, i mean putting candidates on the spot and teaching them on the spot keeping them on the spot. I mean asking them questions and followup questions and followup questions, and more followup questions on just what they intend to do. To the intended to anything at all . What is their answer . And to educate ourselves, and im talking especially to the media, about sort of the basic facts of this, what is a reasonable answer, what isnt a reasonable answer, and keep the candidates on that point. And maybe organize forums, candidate forums, on that specific issue. What to do about the debt . What to do about the entitlements . What to do about taxes, and to keep them on it. You know, its said, challengers always say this at election time. Challengers love to have debates. They love to have political debates. And what do political debates generally mean . Well, the normal debate now in politics is, you ask the media, ask the candidate, whats your position on, lets say, Social Security. And you have to have minutes to answer. And then a minute and a half rebuttal from the other side. That is the typical debate. So you can ask a candidate, welcomed what do you intend to do about Social Security, and they will talk for two and a half minutes. Maybe. Or maybe they will dock it then and get over the issue of waste. We dont have to do anything. Its the frogs and warts deal that weve got to address. Any politician can talk around any subject for two and a half minutes, anybody. When they talk about the debates, its always welcomed we need debates just like lincolndouglas. Did you know what lincolndouglas was . Lincolndouglas was a series of seven debates, and each one lasted three hours on a single subject. What to do about the extension of slavery . That was the subject. And for 21 hours, these two candidates in the Senate Debated this one issue. And i dont think that thats going to happen from the issue of entitlements. But Something Like it has to happen. Something like it has to happen to smoke it out, because otherwise the next president ial election will become what every election has been done, has been in recent history, and that is frivolous. Bob, i wanted to get a question before, i know you can have to leave is a little early. I would like to introduce my begin this come if youre wondering we didnt introduce her at the beginning. Maya is president of the committee for responsible federal budget. And we will be hearing from maya as well, but bob, before you leave, jack had mentioned that debate in iowa where the republican candidate felt they would reject a 101 deal. And how that wasnt realistic. Maybe advice for democratic candidate will be competing and what they need . I dont think its advice that i think going to rest with the press as to whether or not they accept two and a half minute pop situation but obviously democrats are listed as republicans on obfuscating on a question like this. When we put report out of 94 we are forecasting that the moment when this thing is going to get ugly is now, 2014. And it looks dramatically different over the next 10 to 15 years. So youre actually going to say to a candidate for president , if you when you submit a budget in 2017 and over 90 of your budget without making significant changes in the mandatory program to over 90 of your budget is going to the mandatory program. How do you find all the things youre saying you want to fund . I want to keep our nation strong. I promise you both the demo said want to keep our nation strong and want to fund defense at approximate current level, maybe even increase over the next 10 or 12 years but i promise you both of them with the other saying weve got to do more education and infrastructure. It will only occur at the press says, you cant do it. Were not talking of something that will happen 30 years from now. We are talking something if this person becomes president in 2017, thats the first budget. Theyve got to the mandate to do things different because it didnt have the mandate to do things differently, they wont do things differently. Because both the parties, whoever wins the presidency, both parties will say we have the midterms coming up. We do what you think of something controversial like this because again the facts are those of us were over the age of 65, we vote. We dont have to be told that government is important in our lives. We know how important medicare and Social Security is. We vote accordingly. As jack said we will respond to fear monger. Oh, my god. We will all be forging in the alley for food. If we have some modest change in this benefits structure. The presumption were insufficiently patriotic to actually do the right things for kids and grandkids. Bob, i think in terms of obfuscation to the democrats are less capable of dodging if the press will allow them to dodge. But just to emphasize, this is going to be a critical 10 year period but it can get really ugly all for the next 10 years. You dont want to the American People be surprised by the things the next that has to do because they were able to dodge it all the way to the president ial campaign. How was it that you able to get a Bipartisan Commission as diverse as that would that you had to agree on the seven findings . Was that a difficult process . Well, you know, the outcome we have two people who voted, that there wasnt a problem. The public i they probably would still vote that way today. The commission was created by the president , and i went to jack and estimate would be willing to cochair with me. So we kept a bipartisan right from the beginning to the staff was hired by both of us and it made it a lot easier it seems to me to get an agreement if you actually start off with no party involvement. Its basically he and i working together, hiring the staff, developing a reporter is either Fred Goldberg or Mike Weinberger suggested we come up with an interim report with an understanding it was going to be difficult to get consensus on solution. By the phillies we could identify the problem, and we did. I would say at the margin there were some pretty significant changes. I think it influenced the budget act. Had impact on what that act contained. But its just a really, as jack said come its so true. I can. He and i in debate 30 years younger each and the question is, what do you do about those is pretty . Ari went out of tax increase . We take a benefit cut . I will not go. Go beyond its will give you a standing ovation. I hope that doesnt matter. Because the American People are going to get shocked in 2017 when they find out what really has to occur. Now it really isnt, it is unsustainable to nice if they cannot do what current law says you have to do. The interim report was simply the factual background, the charts, you know . Usually are, heres the rate of spending now, heres where we are going. So that wasnt really controversial. What was controversial was, okay, where do they go from your . There were 32 members of the commission, bob and i agreed on some recommendations, and they think we got maybe four or five other people to go along with that, and nobody else. So its very hard to get people to focus on okay, what am i going to do about this thing. If they do focus on a, good point, i do think you get, its likely given the set of circumstances beyond just the numbers of than budget, the Great Recession had a very negative impact on 401 k s, a peoples capacity to Fund AdditionalRetirement Income beyond Social Security. Theres more anxiety about retirement today than there was a 1994. I think both republicans and democrats acknowledge that. I think you get something comparable to what happened in 1983, the last time you had ours in these coming together and saying we have to fix something that we can only together because if we do separately we know what each party would do. It will basically demagogue it and make the other party look like theyve just done something horrible. You know, we get targeted sometimes of being fear mongers, talk about bad things will happen if we dont address these problems, i think sometimes we forget our good things would happen if we did address these problems, so its a positive thing to address, will be the benefit from the trend if we actually solve these problems. Thats pretty metaphysical. Look, i think particularly if you think about the tax reform side of this thing, i do think, relatively easy for somebody doesnt have to face by the republican primary democratic primary to put together a tax and entitlement reform proposal that would grow the economy, be fair to individuals and increase their retirement security. Is relatively easy to figure out how to do it, but what jack said is true. Democrats wont list of things they say their bas base wont aw the publiother publics love a ty say their base wont allow. But its also easy to get ways to do something that would really i think. The economy substantially, and result in increased agree that people have about retirement. I now have to go catch a flight. Before you go could i ask you a question, senator . Given we just went through with 1. 1 chilean whatever and the coming together bipartisan, do you think there will be more bipartisanship in the next congress and the Pass Congress or is it going to get worst . I havent of the foggiest idea. I dont know. I didnt think